1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data processing apparatus and a data processing method having a function of displaying a print status, for example, information about a document being printed.
2. Description of the Related Art
Printing systems generally include a color printer capable of outputting a color image, a host computer for controlling the color printer and generating print data, and a communication interface for connecting the color printer and the host computer. In such a host computer, an operating system operates, and various pieces of software are executed on the operating system. If a document created with application software is printed, the application software, a printer driver, and the operating system exchange data with one another by performing function call processing in accordance with a predetermined procedure so as to generate a printer command. The generated printer command is transferred to a printer, so that the document is printed. Some of such printer drivers communicate with a printer using a communication function given by an operating system so as to cause the printer to display information about a document being printed on the screen of the printer, thereby offering convenience to users (see, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2000-029641).
Microsoft Corporation has recently developed a new electronic document format, XPS (XML Paper Specification). XPS has a tree structure in which a single electronic document includes a plurality of documents, thereby achieving the logical management of these documents. For example, a single electronic document can include three documents, a word processing document, a spreadsheet document, and a presentation document. It is assumed that this electronic document is printed. At that time, if information about the electronic document being printed is displayed on a screen using a method in the related art, a page being printed and the number of printed pages can be displayed. However, it cannot be determined which of these documents included in the electronic document corresponds to the page being printed or a printed page.
In Microsoft Windows (registered trademark) Vista, a module called a filter pipeline for performing print processing of an XPS document can notify an OS print queue of a processing status using an OS print support function called a progress report every time each page of each document included in an XPS document is processed. By referring to a status field of the print queue, a user can check the page of a document being processed. However, in some cases, a page displayed in the status field as a page being processed does not correspond to a page being printed by a printer.
If the printing of a plurality of copies is set, each document included in an XPS document is copied by a filter pipeline. For example, two copies of an XPS document including only a single word processing document are printed, a word processing document copied by the filter pipeline is added so as to create an XPS document including two word processing documents. If a user checks a processing status notified by a progress report by referring to a status field of a print queue when the filter pipeline processes the second copy, a message “printing-fixed document sequence 1-fixed document 2-fixed page 1” is displayed. If one copy of the XPS document including two word processing documents is printed, the same message “printing-fixed document sequence 1-fixed document 2-fixed page 1” is displayed. Thus, a user cannot distinguish between these cases.